June 17, 2011

Andrew’s Father’s Day Post

I asked Andrew if he would do a post during this week before Father’s Day. His response went a little something like this:

“Wait. You want ME to do work on YOUR blog for you for Father’s Day?”

Um, yes? You know, to get the Dad perspective! His ‘Thor’ post was very popular and received the most comments the blog has ever received! So after much begging and pleading and promising of foot rubs that I most likely will never deliver on, he agreed to do another guest post for me. Yay!

ANSWER: Trick question! You should already have known what was the matter (through some kind of psychic power, I guess). By asking her, you have only proven your emotional ignorance.

But enough about my beautiful, sweet, loving wife. This is supposed to be Father’s Day Week on the blog, so I should talk about some fatherly stuff.

To be completely honest, Melissa does the lion’s share of the parenting around here. She does reap the rewards of her special relationship with Julia, however. For example, the other day Julia came into my office and gave me a big hug, saying “I love you, daddy.” She paused for a second, thinking, then added, “I love mommy more, but I still like you a lot.” I get a fair amount of that.

(This is Julia’s rendition of our family. That tall figure? That’s Mommy! The little brown smudge in the middle? That’s Daddy! I think even the cats are bigger than I am.)

Query from Melissa: Am I brandishing a WEAPON of some kind??

All is not lost, however. You see, Julia knows that Daddy is good for at least one thing – video games! Out of all our video games, Julia’s favorite is almost certainly ‘The Munchables’.

The home planet of the Munchables has been invaded by a race of evil Space Pirates, who are also confusingly called “Tabemon Monsters”. And they’re vegetables. The game basically makes no sense.

The boss pirates at the end of each stage are Julia’s favorite part of the game. She can tell you all about Brocco-Lee, Great Grapy, Don Onion, and the rest.

The thing about this game is…it’s not very good. But the goofiness of the plot makes up for a lot of it. And Julia loves it, which is the real point.

Ok, since this blog is supposed be about children’s books (at least, I thought it was) NOTE FROM MODERATOR: WE ALSO DISCUSS GAMES!, I should at least mention a book in passing. Some of my very favorite children’s books of all time are the ‘Frog and Toad’ books by Arnold Lobel. Unfortunately I would need at least a week’s worth of posts to do them justice. Luckily for us, Lobel wrote a number of other books, so let’s talk about ‘Grasshopper on the Road’.

Like many of his books, it’s structured as a loosely connected series of mini-stories. Basically, Grasshopper goes walking along the road and encounters various characters and adventures along the way.

Here are the opening lines:

Grasshopper wanted to go on a journey. “I will find a road,” he said. “I will follow that road wherever it goes.”One morning Grasshopper found a road. It was long and dusty. It went up hills and down into valleys. “This road looks fine to me,” said Grasshopper. “I am on my way!”

That’s some deep @*%# right there, folks. (Hi! It’s Melissa again! I had to cut Andrew off. He wanted to get into a further dissertation about how The Road = A Metaphor for Life and so on, but this post is already a billion words long.)

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!

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Oh, that was absolutely fabulous... while I read it I could nearly tune out all the fighting that is brotherhood around here. (that is until bibs started screaming bloody murder) then I got back to reading and Dax saw the video game and got really excited! So Andrew should definately continue to be a contrubutor, this stuff is priceless! (and the picture of when your wife walks into the room looking like this... oh man, pricless.)